Many retail stores including shopping centers, grocery stores, clothing stores and others employ an age old method for receiving payments from customers who purchase products in the store. This method includes enabling the shopper to choose various goods to be purchased, place those goods in a shopping container, and providing a point of sale checkout mechanism such as a cash register or a self-serve payment system.
Modernly, products typically carry a product identifier such as a price tag, barcode, or radio frequency identification device that enables identification of the product and price of the product. During checkout a product identifier communicates with the checkout mechanism to tally the goods to be purchased, to calculate a purchase price and to enable payment.
For many years retailers have actively improved point of sale checkout systems to enable customers to more quickly and easily purchase goods. Improvements including barcode readers and radio frequency identification tag readers that enable the checkout process to be faster and easier. In this way there are less items that require a store employee to to physically read a price tag and type prices into a cash register.
Still there is room for improvement because customers are still required to queue in checkout lines and pass each product from the shopping cart or basket through a scanner. These customers are typically also required to swipe a credit or debit card during the checkout procedure. In other cases smart phones, or other electronics devices including smart cards having near field communication capability are used to complete transactions.
What is desired is a way of enabling customers to purchase goods in a retail store without having to queue for checkout. What is also desired are improved ways to manage inventories, and prevent theft.